Business Archives - Page 4 of 10 - NuTech Services LLC

May, 2021

Building a Solid Continuity Strategy Pays Dividends

Business continuity is difficult to talk about for some business owners, specifically because no one likes to talk about the worst case scenario. What would you do if your business were to suddenly go through a disaster? Do you have a plan in place? If not, let’s talk about that. Here are some aspects of business continuity that you must consider. Remember; your company’s future depends on it!

The first step is to determine what we mean when we say “business continuity,” especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What is Business Continuity?

There is no shortage of things that can go wrong for a business. Natural disasters, power outages, fires, floods, hacking attacks, ransomware, and user error can all contribute to a significant disruption of operations if you’re unprepared for them. A business continuity plan is designed to help your organization work through any such disaster and keep downtime to a minimum. We want to emphasize that business continuity and disaster recovery are two different things; disaster recovery, or how your organization responds to a data loss incident, is but one part of a successful business continuity plan.

Components of a Business Continuity Strategy

Before we jump into what your priorities are for your business continuity strategy, it helps to perform what’s called a business impact analysis. This is a test that determines what the critical functions of your business are, where you take a close look at operations and make determinations about what is most important for getting back in business following a disaster. By having a clear understanding of your priorities regarding business continuity, you will optimize your chances of success should you ever find yourself implementing the plan.

While we could list off several aspects of business continuity here, suffice to say that most variables to consider for your plan will fall into one of the three categories below:

Digital resources: Data is critical to the operations of most businesses to at least some degree. Some organizations store it on-premises while others store it in the cloud. Regardless, having a way to maintain access and recover lost data in the event of a disaster will be paramount to your plan’s success.
Human resources: While the data might be one part of keeping your business afloat, the people who interpret and utilize that data also must be accounted for. A chain of command can help your organization even should the leader somehow become incapacitated or unable to perform in their role. Furthermore, you’ll need to maintain contact with clients and vendors to ensure they are fully aware of the situation.
Physical resources: Once you have safeguarded your data and your workers, you’ll need to figure out where they will work and how it will be housed. Physical resources include things like your office space, hardware solutions, and any other tools your employees might need to do their jobs. In the case of manufacturing, this might mean maintaining the supply chain for parts or products.

All things considered, your business continuity strategy should consider everyone needed to keep your business in proper working order, as well as all of the resources they require to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. We especially recommend that you have your business continuity plan in a location where it is accessible by anyone who might need it, along with a list of critical equipment, the locations of your data backups, and any needed contact information.

How Do You Reinforce Business Continuity?

Remember, your plan is only valuable if it is something that can be executed on. Consider how easy (or difficult) it will be for you to successfully implement your strategy. If you do a “mock” test of your plan, you might uncover what works, what doesn’t, and what needs to be improved upon. When you routinely test your strategy, you won’t be caught off guard. Here are some ideas to consider for when you test your business continuity plan:

Downtime: Does your plan meet the expected minimum of downtime? Does it keep costs down?
Implementation: Is your plan something that can be implemented at a moment’s notice?
Feedback: What do your staff think about the plan? Do they have any recommendations or ideas for improvement?

Let’s Get You Started

If this all feels a little overwhelming or panic-inducing, we urge you to contact NuTech Services. We can walk you through the process of setting up a business continuity plan, equip your organization with the tools needed to pull it off, and assist with the testing process. To learn more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

May, 2021

Why Consistency is Critical to Your Position as Business Leader

From an employee’s perspective, one of the most frustrating issues that could be present in the workplace is leadership that proves to be inconsistent. This lack of managerial consistency can wind up causing some serious problems and is often demonstrated through a variety of repeated behaviors.

These behaviors often include:

Falling through on commitments.
Lateness or absenteeism from scheduled meetings.
Unannounced procedural changes and frustration when workers aren’t aware of the change.
Overpromising beyond the company’s capabilities.
Promising success with no strategy to accomplish it.

This kind of inconsistency can be downright toxic to the business, leading to turnover, poor customer interactions and relationships, and an assortment of other detriments to anyone associated with the business—those who work there, those who work with it, and even those just considering the idea of working with it.

Let’s look at why it is so important to demonstrate consistency within your business.

Consistency Signals Respect

If you were to be inconsistent in how you ran your business, it would make you come up as irresponsible at best. As a leader, you need to be sure that your team respects you enough to follow, and that your clientele is confident enough to bet money on you. Too many contradictory actions and this respect and confidence will likely evaporate.

The best leaders, historically speaking, lead by example, and you’ll likely get as you give if you show your clients and employees alike the respect that a bit of stability suggests. In order to lead effectively, you need to be trusted to act a certain way. By its very definition, consistency will give that trust the foundation it needs.

Consistency Breeds Accountability

On a related note, accountability is equally important to those in leadership roles. Let’s face it, if the people working under you are underperforming to your expectations, you’d say they were falling short, right? Well, employees rightly feel the same way about management—there are certain responsibilities that company leadership must answer for. Failing that encourages some not-so-great repercussions, including mixed results, unpredictable costs, and lacking productivity.

Consistency Reveals Patterns

When your processes are followed consistently, it can help you generate the metrics that will be most useful to you as you crunch the numbers for your business analytics. While this will take at least three months of sustained (or, shall we say consistent) consistency, you’ll soon have the data you need to make an informed decision.

Consistency Signals Character

Reputation management has never before been such a crucial consideration for a business, as exposure to the public eye has never been so prevalent before. It isn’t exactly a secret that treating your team members poorly can come back to haunt an organization, so if you constantly change the environment they work in, it will only promote a lack of faith in your leadership. While innovation is to be welcomed, of course, your team will need a bit of a warning ahead of any major shifts.

What do you think is the greatest benefit that business consistency can bring? Keep checking back for more great technology content!

May, 2021

Working from Home is a Mixed Bag for Parents

For all its benefits, remote work can introduce plenty of complications. These complications can easily make employees question a lot of things about their careers, including whether or not they should continue working for the same company they have been. This has been particularly the case amongst workers with children also in the home.

Let’s consider a few of the many considerations that remote work has introduced, and how your employees with families might be feeling in response.

How Children Can Complicate COVID Considerations

Or, more accurately, the family dynamic as a whole.

While raising a child can be challenging in and of itself, trying to work remotely while also ensuring they remain safe, cared for, and educated adds an additional level of difficulty into the mix. Just consider how many relied on regular childcare services in order to balance their responsibilities in a responsible way before the pandemic began, even in addition to the fact that the lion’s share of their childrens’ days were spent in school. Once schools closed down and social distancing principles spread, it became nigh on impossible to both work and parent effectively without some give and take.

This has created an assortment of concerns for working parents in addition to the assorted challenges that remote work can have in terms of professional performance and business relationships. For instance, many different considerations have occupied the thoughts of parents who are now working remotely, including concerns about returning to the conventional workplace in general. Childcare responsibilities concern 49 percent, second only to the risk of being exposed to COVID-19 (53 percent), and above decreased work flexibility (48 percent), diminished work-life balance (46 percent), or office politics (31 percent).

Concerns and Impacts of Remote Work

Working parents also have a lot to worry about, professionally speaking:

60 percent of parents have felt impacts of burnout, as compared to a general population rate of 56 percent.
41 percent report worse-off mental health since the pandemic began, as compared to 38 percent of the population.
19 percent of parents worry about their chances of promotion while working remotely, while only 14 percent of all respondents do.
22 percent of parents report their skills suffering, while the general population rate is just 19 percent.
Working parents have also been struggling with boundaries and various complications while working from home.
- 40 percent overwork, or work longer than they should
- 36 percent deal with distractions unrelated to work
- 28 percent have to deal with unreliable Wi-Fi connectivity
- 26 percent deal with tech issues that need troubleshooting
- 24 percent are worn down by video meetings
- 18 percent have issues maintaining their relationships with coworkers
- 16 percent have issues maintaining their relationships with their bosses

In turn, the realities of raising children while also trying to work remotely has had a varied impact on the employment status of many parents:

43 percent of parents have seen no impacts
21 percent cut back on their working hours
16 percent quit work while planning to rejoin the workforce later
4 percent had a partner reduce their hours
2 percent quit work with no intention of returning
2 percent had a partner quit as a result

However, Employees Don’t Want to Give Up Remote Operations

So long as their industry enables them to do so, many want the capability to work from home—to some extent, at least—to continue once the situation normalizes. The success that many have seen makes this a reasonable goal. After all, if businesses have maintained their operations remotely during this time, why couldn’t or wouldn’t they once a return to the office was feasible?

Many have reported that the elimination of the commute alone has had impacts on the rest of their itineraries that make life much easier to manage, with increased family time being another benefit of such flexibility.

Otherwise, lots of workers predict that remote work will help to support workplace gender equality, along with a litany of other benefits to the workforce and employers alike, including heightened productivity, an improved work-life balance, and fewer office politics.

One way or another, the question of remote work and the concept of a flexible work environment is one that most companies are going to have to answer at some point. NuTech Services can assist you in implementing the technology needed to support all of your operations, in-house and out. To find out what we can do for you, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

May, 2021

Five Solutions to Simplify Remote Work Strategies

Working from home adds quite a few additional wrinkles into the workday, including a few that pertain to your team’s communicative capabilities. With many different people operating at their best through different forms of communication, establishing which of these forms best suits your needs is crucial. Let us consider some of the options you have, whether you’re fully investing in a future of remote operations, or simply planning a more hybrid approach as time passes.

For simplicity, we have limited ourselves to the most crucial solutions we think everyone should have.

Video Conferencing

While nothing we have right now can fully replace the capabilities of in-person communications, video conferencing may just be the next best thing available. A lot of software developers have picked up on this, which may explain why so many other kinds of software integrate well with today’s video conferencing solutions.

In the business sense, video conferencing gives your team an outlet to assemble most like they would in the office—along with giving sales teams a much more convenient way to meet with prospects. Wonderfully lightweight and accepted by the business world, most of today’s workstations are likely already set up to support conferencing. If they are not, there is a practically negligible investment to make there in exchange for greater flexibility and sustained communications and collaboration.

Instant Messaging

While infamously a way for coworkers to spend their hours chattering amongst themselves about practically anything but work, a properly utilized instant messaging platform can be an essential piece of your remote workers’ toolset. When used appropriately, a study has shown that instant messaging and other non-email collaborative solutions can increase productivity by anywhere from 20-to-25 percent.

That is not nothing, and just helps to demonstrate how unhindered communications—like those the convenience of instant messaging supports—can help liberate your team members to accomplish more on your business’ behalf. This is particularly the case where a remote workforce is involved.

Customer Relationship Management

The most important relationships a business forms are those that are formed with their customer base. As such, there needs to be a reliable means of tracking and cultivating these relationships, as well as to simplify any requirements imposed on the customer’s end. A Customer Relationship Management tool, commonly abbreviated to a CRM, has been the solution that many businesses rely on for just that purpose.

The typical CRM solution will usually feature some kind of ticketing system for customer support purposes, a scheduling module to keep everyone on task and able to access the resources they need, and various automation capabilities to help make sure everyone is spending their time on revenue-generating endeavors. As such, a CRM provides the channels for a company to reach out to its base while also maintaining its own internal productivity. Any small business—particularly one with a decentralized workforce—that intends to grow should be utilizing a CRM for all it is worth.

Cloud Computing

Access is crucial to a remote worker, and access is something that the cloud can help provide in a way that is both simple and cost-effective. Whether your business needs the storage to securely keep its shared documents or needs collaborative tools to enable your team to work with the data you possess, the cloud can facilitate that need. Business continuity is also much simpler to secure during a disaster if you’ve maintained a cloud-based backup of your data.

Of course, the cloud is also capable of more, like delivering the solutions that your team members need to them directly. Whether you need a server at scale, or enterprise-grade security, and/or robust communication tools, there is a cloud-based option waiting for you.

Onboarding Solutions

Onboarding any new employee is a process in and of itself, and this is only exacerbated when that employee is to operate remotely. In order to get them acquainted with your policies and familiar with your solution set, there is going to be some training involved.

Nowadays, Learning Management Systems (or LMS) take care of that training for you, more expeditiously. Many business software solutions have them built into the program at this point, but you can also customize your own to ensure that your new hire is prepared for their new responsibilities. On your end, you get a better-prepared team member for a decreased financial investment.

Whether you’re embracing the remote workforce moving forward or striving for a return to your base of operations, NuTech Services can help equip you for success. To talk strategy with one of our experts, call us at 810.230.9455 today.

Apr, 2021

The SMB’s Checklist for Necessary IT Services

Managed IT services have grown from a niche offering to a well-known concept in recent years, with many businesses already relying on outsourced IT services to some degree. In many ways, this only makes sense, as it allows businesses to enjoy access to services that would otherwise cost too much for them to independently adopt and support.

Of course, your choice of managed service provider will make a difference. Here, we’ve compiled a few key variables to keep in mind as you select a managed service provider.

Speed and Efficiency

Let’s face facts: enlisting an external provider is only going to do your business so much good if that provider can’t provide their services more expeditiously than an internal IT pro could. That’s why we’re very proud of the proactive nature that our services possess. Rather than waiting for our clients to report to us with a problem to be solved, our advanced monitoring and management software enables us to keep your network and essential hardware running effectively, proactively identifying and patching roadblocks as they are identified—not after they’ve already created delays.

With the importance that a business’ IT solutions have to its productivity, an IT service provider has a critical role to fill as they work to keep everything operational as consistently as possible. Don’t settle for a provider who promises anything less than that.

Disaster Recovery

With the prevalence of potential disasters looming, the capability to weather them is an incredibly crucial consideration for any business to take on. With the IT services provided by NuTech Services, this prospect becomes much simpler to handle through the implementation of a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery system. Not only will your data be protected, but you will also have access to the professional experience of our technicians, prepared to help get your business back on its feet after being struck by some misfortune at any scale.

Readily Available Support

When it comes to your business’ technology, Murphy’s Law is very much a factor—what can go wrong, likely will. Passwords will likely be forgotten, computers will have issues, and software will crash. Working with NuTech Services gives you access to a comprehensive help desk that your staff can access for assistance with such matters. A direct line to our certified team will give your employees the lifeline they’ll need should (and when) something goes wrong.

Smart and Realistic IT Budgeting

Finally, it is important to mention that we understand that your business most likely doesn’t have a bottomless budget for its IT, making it especially important to plan to get the most value out of the investments you can make. Between supporting your team members, maintaining the technology that your processes are based on, and dealing with your assorted vendors and service providers, a controlled and comprehensive strategy becomes a crucial facet to see to. This is another task that our team is well-suited for, working with you to maximize the return you see for your investments without necessarily maximizing these investments themselves.

Enjoy the Peace of Mind that Managed IT Can Bring

Whether you already have a managed service agreement and are looking for a more providing provider, or you’re still managing your modern technology through antiquated methods, we encourage you to reach out to learn more about our services. We’re committed to improving your business’ operations by helping to care for the technology that enables them.

Learn more about what we offer by calling us at 810.230.9455 today.

Mar, 2021

Going Over the Basics of Collaboration Solutions

With businesses depending on technology more now than ever, it stands to reason that the collaboration solutions that are available would improve as demand increases. Today’s business needs a collaboration solution that allows them to communicate, manage tasks, and be a reliable solution for teams separated by more than just a wall. Let’s take a look at the modern collaboration tool and how they provide powerful benefits for the modern business.

What Are Collaboration Solutions?

There used to be the phone, then there was email, then instant messaging; the modern business landscape has been formed from the invention and innovation of tools that allow people to communicate through technology. With many business leaders searching for working solutions for their company’s inefficiencies, developers have created a set of new tools that work to integrate communication with productivity in new ways.

New collaboration solutions don’t just combine tools, they create complete environments where people can work together to complete a common goal from about anywhere. These new tools are a benefit to any organization whether your workers work side-by-side in an office or if they are separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. This is because solid collaboration tools can help your team build solid practices and relationships. This results in better outcomes.

The Collaboration App

Technically, there are only three types of collaboration software. They are:

Communication – VoIP, email, instant messaging keep people in contact and are relatively easy to use and cost efficient.
Conferencing – Video and audio conferencing takes the standard communication and makes it work for larger groups of people.
Coordination – In order to successfully collaborate with others, everyone needs access to the resources to complete the task/job/project. Having the ability to schedule people, send, receive, and store files, and control access to resources are extremely useful variables when working in a collaborative setting.

Today, there are apps that provide teams (and whole companies) the means to manage their work, communicate in multiple ways, and even integrate useful tools that will make work move that much faster. These collaboration tools are typically set up like a customizable forum, but each new forum feed has the ability to be a central hub to any particular project. Additionally, by allowing for all types of third-party application integrations, these apps build a completely customizable solution that can allow people to communicate through several different means, have the resources they need on hand, and provide the tools needed to build a culture that revolves around efficient teamwork.

If you would like to talk to one of our certified IT technicians about collaboration software that can change the way your business functions and gives you the tools your business requires to get where it wants to go, give NuTech Services a call today at 810.230.9455.

Mar, 2021

Look How Much the Internet has Changed

When the Internet was established, it was a marvel. Now people could move information across the world in a matter of seconds. This is why the term “world wide web” was coined. Nowadays, there are literally billions of users on the Internet and the rules have had to be changed. This has some online services in conflict with government regulations and has an impact on how users are able to use the Internet. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Shifting Forces are Dictating Users’ Internet

The Internet has changed a lot due to geopolitical considerations, which admittedly was not the interface that was intended by its creators. With the growth and importance of the Internet today, however, it isn’t a surprise that governments seek to regulate the medium to promote security. Some examples of this include:

The United States government has considered blocking TikTok and WeChat, as they are hosted in China.
The Indian government has blocked dozens of applications (including these two) for similar reasons and are now looking critically at Twitter.
The Australian government was at odds with Facebook over a proposed law, leading to Facebook changing its functionality in the country until an agreement was struck.

These are clear disputes between corporate entities and the countries they do business in. These considerations (and literally thousands more from all over the world) makes “the Internet” different depending on what country you are accessing it from. The recent sweep of nationalism that has been spreading in nations all over the world for the past decade or so is exacerbating these differences.

Look at What Has Changed

If you consider when Facebook first went global, it brought a swelling of perceived freedom to people that had considered themselves repressed for a long time. Almost immediately, however, some nations including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the People’s Republic of China decided to limit what users in their countries could access. There were other nations that censored the use of the social network, but for the most part Facebook spread around the world fairly rapidly at the turn of the last decade. Today, however, after years of Facebook-cited negative situations, many nations are limiting Facebook and other social media platforms. Now, with leaders of several nations, including the United States, suggesting these companies simply have too much power and influence, you are beginning to see some very public decrees citing Facebook and other social media companies attempting to limit their influence.

The Australian situation is probably the most internetesting of the bunch. Australian government passed a law that’s intent was to require tech firms and platforms like Facebook to pay for the capability to share human-related stories. This has resulted in news organizations, and affiliated companies (including charities) being wrapped up in the situation. The issue was amicably resolved, but it highlights some of the problems with how the Internet is going to be governed going forward.

The Call for Globalized Regulations

Like any other system that is used throughout the world, there are calls for a standard to be put in place that dictates how the Internet can be used and regulated. Thus far, traction on this has been moving at a snail’s pace. The logistics are difficult with some nations depending more on the Internet than others, and therefore the financial aspect of the situation is going to be a problem in order to get nations to agree on a reasonable standard.

What are your thoughts? Should there be a worldwide standard to what can and can’t go on on the Internet? Should nations be limited in the amount of control they have over their people’s use of the tool? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below and stop back to our blog for more great commentary.

Jan, 2021

Artificial Intelligence and the Tools Designed to Improve Business

AI has been one of the leading innovative topics to hit the technology world over the past couple of years. At first, people thought that AI was only the process of creating machines that will inevitably destroy the human race, and didn’t understand that algorithmic machine learning could have stark benefits for business and society. Today, AI can be found in all types of different pieces of software. Let’s take a look at a couple of ways AI is currently being used in business.

#1 – Cybersecurity

One of the most important uses of AI is for cybersecurity, most of which is identifying actual threats and eliminating them before they can cause any problems for a business. There are a lot of potential threats out there and today, IT professionals are using AI to avoid spending time on situations that turn out to be non-issues. AI can be used to detect intrusions, identify vulnerabilities in software, and find malicious code that has already been installed on the system.

#2 – Customer Service

AI’s most noteworthy application has been the incorporation into customer relations. Chatbots and other technologies that are fueled by machine learning can provide a lot of value for most organizations that simply cannot afford to employ a complete product or service support team. Users may not even realize that they are engaging with an AI as many newer solutions learn rapidly to provide customers with a fast, reliable interface in which to get support.

#3 – Operational Efficiency

For some time, automation has been the name of the game when businesses attempt to streamline operations. Today, AI is beginning to provide a more diverse set of companies the opportunity to leverage more sophisticated tools. Since AI is constantly evolving and developing, more and more businesses are able to build tools around AI/machine learning than ever before. AI allows businesses to automate more of the mundane and repetitive tasks that have hindered productivity and progress, reducing costs, and providing a substantive boost in efficiency.

There may not be AI beings peppered among us yet, but AI is making a big push to be the most important emerging technology of the 21st century. If you would like to learn more about getting the results your business wants from its relationship with technology, return to our blog or give us a call at 810.230.9455 today.

Jan, 2021

2021 is Poised to Hold Some Big IT Challenges to Overcome

Considering that 2020 was… less than great for many businesses, it should come as no surprise that there will likely be difficulties that carry on for some time into 2021. Naturally, these difficulties will require some new ideas and fresh thinking to properly resolve, as well as an openness to adopting innovative technologies. Let’s look ahead to some of the IT challenges we anticipate that 2021 will hold for businesses.

Reconsidering Where Work is Done

Before the events of 2020, the approach that businesses took to remote work (if any) effectively boiled down to enable 20 percent or so of their workforce being capable of working out-of-office while the remaining 80 percent stayed in the office. Once the various issues and events of 2020 came about, however, these trends effectively flipped for many—if not transitioning to remote entirely.

As a result, companies have needed to make various changes to not only enable their team members to work productively from home, but also to do so safely… a need that will not go away throughout 2021.

Depending on the device that a user is working on—and more specifically, who owns the device in question—different security protocols and processes need to be put in place. Remote monitoring and management will be crucial to continue, especially if remote work of any scale remains once the pressing need to work remotely passes.

Ensuring Uptime and Resisting Burnout

Taking the surge in remote work strategies into consideration, the matter of preserving productivity becomes another particularly pertinent topic to discuss. Uptime becomes the key word, as anything less than 100 percent is seen as a shortcoming… after all, if a business can’t provide that for its clients and customers, the trust that they’ve built up is going to diminish considerably. By maintaining their uptime, the business can instead take advantage of that trust in different ways that advance its operations.

With such an uncertain year just behind us, businesses will need to ensure that these clients can trust in their services.

Furthermore, to accomplish this fully, a business also must ensure that its team members are prepared to deliver these services as needed. This makes work fatigue and burnout a serious threat. To help minimize the potential for this outcome as employees are working from home, the solutions that they’re using must be reliable enough to avoid the chance of exacerbating employee frustration.

Reexamining Budget Allocation

Finally, with business finances in flux after the last year, the investments that businesses make into their tools will need to be reconsidered and adjusted to optimize them. This will require an examination of each solution’s return on investment and how well it serves its intended purpose.

This means that 2021 will likely see some shifts in how businesses invest in cloud-based services as compared to locally hosted solutions, and what level of priority is given to advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and other similar solutions.

From where we stand now, 2021 stands to be a year of shifts and shakeups—make sure that your business has the support it needs to make it through. NuTech Services can help. Find out what we can do to assist your operations by calling 810.230.9455.

Jan, 2021

Lessons to Learn From Lego’s IT Development

Businesses of all sizes have been able to successfully overcome operational challenges by rethinking and adapting the technology they utilize. Let’s consider a huge example and look at what The Lego Group (as in the building blocks) has done to address some of their technological challenges with improved solutions—as well as how your business can do the same.

The Lego Group’s Situation

Sharing their story at the AWS re:Invent virtual conference, The Lego Group revealed that their online presence and its Direct Shopper Technology team was encountering issues… particularly when their traffic was spiking during sales events and product launches, reaching levels 9.5 times what was typical and with a 200-fold increase in transactions. Back in 2017, the release of the largest building set to date (the Star Wars™ Ultimate Collector Series Millennium Falcon™ set, with 7541 pieces) and the resulting traffic on launch day effectively shut down the back-end of their website and overwhelmed the sales tax functionality that called back to their on-premise infrastructure.

This made it so that visitors would only see the website’s maintenance page.

This event proved to the company that some changes had to be made, as their growth simply couldn’t be supported through their on-premise solutions and the limited scalability they could offer. Furthermore, making these changes could allow the company to focus more on their customers’ experience on the website, rather than focusing on basic upkeep, while also giving them the resources to adapt to such demand spikes and capitalize on innovation.

Lego’s Growth Trajectory

Lego began their transition to cloud services in 2018 with the migration of their sales tax calculator and three additional processing services. Ten months later, the company had a serverless platform that was capable of everything its on-premise infrastructure could do, and soon after, the cloud had overtaken their on-premise capabilities with new records being established each month.

As of July of 2019, The Lego Group has been able to triple the number of engineers under their employ through remote operations and adopt 36 more serverless services, utilizing automation and monitoring to ensure that issues could be identified and addressed promptly. This approach has also allowed Lego to shift their attention from maintenance to developing new features that will help to further improve their service and the customer experience that results from it.

What Does this Have to Do With You?

While admittedly scaled up considerably, Lego’s transition to the cloud serves as an effective case study for any business that is experiencing IT challenges, as it demonstrates how much a company can grow and innovate by simply taking advantage of the technology that is available.

The best part is that this is the case for businesses of effectively any size—from a consumer retail and manufacturing giant such as The Lego Group to the small mom-and-pop shops who sell the construction sets that Lego produces. Of course, these capabilities also expand outside of the retail industry, with the potential to benefit a company that operates in effectively any vertical where its operations are concerned.

NuTech Services is here to help you put the technology that can benefit your business into place, ensuring that any operational issues are addressed and that all opportunities are embraced. To find out more about the solutions we use to accomplish this, make sure you reach out to us by calling 810.230.9455.

Dec, 2020

Is 2021 the Year Your Business Embraces VoIP? (It Should Be)

Since its widespread adoption, the telephone has proved to be a hugely beneficial tool for businesses of all kinds… despite the considerable costs that it can incur. Fortunately for your business’ budget, however, there is a far more cost-effective means for you to enjoy the benefits of telephony: VoIP, short for Voice over Internet Protocol. Let’s go over some of the reasons why VoIP is just a better option for any business.

What is VoIP?

At first glance, VoIP is almost indistinguishable from the telephone services you are used to using—in fact, you’ve likely used it before.

Basically, instead of using the network of telephone wires that stretches from your service provider to your location, VoIP uses your broadband connection to transmit your call data to and from the recipient. In doing so, you eliminate the need for a pricy telephone service, instead getting double duty from your Internet.

Like we said, you’ve likely used VoIP technology in some form. Skype, Facetime, and Facebook Messenger all operate as VoIP solutions, albeit more for the personal user than an organization. For the organization, many VoIP platforms are available that provide a hefty list of features and options, leading to greater advantages.

The Advantages of Using VoIP in a Business Setting

The benefits of using VoIP are straightforward for the business:

Cost

This is perhaps the most visible (and, for that matter, impactful) benefits that Voice over Internet Protocol offers. A POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) requires a sizable investment for the infrastructure alone, never mind the additional features that aren’t included by default. Comparatively, VoIP needs very little up-front investment, and these additional features are almost always included.

Simplicity

VoIP is a perfect example of a plug-in-and-play solution, with very little else involved in its setup besides signing into your solution and literally plugging in the device. Similarly, starting up and operating the additional features incorporated into VoIP is a very user-friendly experience as well. This ease of use helps to motivate your team to use the platform’s conferencing capabilities and mobile-friendly softphone, and for your part, adding users is a simple enough task.

Function

Finally, these additional features further support your business’ capacity to communicate effectively. Here’s a general idea of what VoIP solutions will offer:

Call forwarding
Personalized extensions
Call routing
Call recording
Automated receptionist
Call queues
Instant messaging
Text messaging
Find me, follow me
Audio and video conferencing
Integrated voicemail
Line-of-business integration

Depending on the VoIP solution implemented, many more features will likely be available in addition to these.

In short, VoIP makes your business communications better, benefitting both your internal collaboration and your outreach efforts. Find out more about what VoIP can do, and what’s involved in implementing it, by calling our professionals at NuTech Services at 810.230.9455.

Dec, 2020

Where MSP Services Come From

For most people, the term tech support is pretty self-explanatory. The terms managed services and MSP… not so much. Let’s go over what makes managed services and what we do as a managed service provider so different from the IT support you may be used to. To start, we’ll review where the idea of an MSP came from, and end with what one like us can do for you.

Defining Managed Services

On a very fundamental level, managed services and tech support are very different due to the way they operate.

Traditional tech support, also referred to as break-fix IT, are those that most people think of. Whenever a piece of technology breaks down or has some other issue, an IT technician is called to fix it. This was the predominant—and really, the only—option to receive any level of IT support for some time, despite the expensive repeat visits and prolonged operational interruptions that came with it. For larger enterprises, hiring full-time IT staff solved this problem. It’s still costly, and often too costly for small businesses, but it does lead to faster turnaround times and ongoing support.

On the other hand, managed services are specifically designed with the small-to-medium-sized business in mind. Instead of waiting around for a company to call with an IT issue, a managed service provider will instead proactively monitor a company’s solutions to ensure nothing goes wrong in the first place. We’ll go a little deeper into how this is particularly beneficial later on, after we review how managed services came to be.

The Development of IT Support Services

Back when computers were first made available to businesses, small regional providers known as system builders that would construct generic computers for companies to use began to pop up. Large companies soon followed suit, and as a result, the high price of personal computers was reduced significantly.

In response to this change, system builders shifted away from the labor-intensive creation of computers to simply reselling those that the larger companies made. This gave them the title of systems reseller and proved to be a lucrative approach… especially without the Internet to facilitate direct-to-consumer computer sales.

Despite this, resellers discovered that they could generate higher profits by adding to what the manufacturers were providing. This led to the development of value-added resellers, or VARs. These VARs would sell the machines to consumers, as well as help install them and add them to existing computer networks. These networks and their needed infrastructure grew in importance as the Internet became a viable tool for businesses to use in the 1990s.

It was then that the VARs became systems integrators, and commonly provided break-fix repair services.

As the 1990s approached the 2000s, IT services were common enough for providers to start to act as advisors to their clients, recommending tools and introducing best practices into the clients’ networks. It was then that the term IT consultant was used.

Finally, with businesses relying on their technology more than ever before, it was no longer sustainable to solve problems after they happened. This helped drive the idea of proactive monitoring, remote maintenance, and online service delivery forward. At this point, the managed service provider was a reality, with the security of proactive support delivered in return for a set monthly fee.

What Can an MSP Do for My Business?

Today, managed services are the right choice for a business that wants to improve its operations while managing their time and budget more effectively. With a single provider taking care of all its IT management and maintenance needs, a business subscribed to these services gets to enjoy clear operational benefits with the confidence that their technology is reliable.

NuTech Services is proud to be known as an MSP, delivering top-notch solutions and services to businesses in a sustainable and beneficial way. To learn more about how we can assist you in your operations, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

Dec, 2020

How Managed Services Developed into What They Are

When you see that we offer tech support, you almost certainly have an idea of what that means. However, upon hearing about our typical service delivery for the first time, many people are really surprised by how different our services—as a managed service provider—are. These differences are not an accident. Let’s go back in time a little while to explore how managed services came about, and what difference they could make for you.

What are Managed Services?

Let’s start off with a very basic description of what “managed services” are, as compared to the common impression of “tech support.” Whenever one thinks about “tech support” or “IT,” they’re likely thinking of the break-fix version: some piece of information technology breaks or malfunctions, so IT is called in to fix it. While this proved effective enough, it also led to a lot of repeat visits… oftentimes for things that were relatively simple to fix.

Managed services are a different approach, tailored particularly for small to medium-sized businesses. Instead of waiting for something to go wrong, a company will enlist a managed service provider—or MSP—to proactively monitor their IT to help prevent issues from impacting it. This brings a variety of benefits that we’ll touch upon later. Right now, we wanted to look back and consider how this approach was first devised and deployed.

The History of Computer Support and Services

As computers were first introduced into the business landscape, so-called system builders—small regional businesses that offered “white box”, or generic computers—would offer other businesses their services. Large companies soon joined in, and this resulted in the prices of personal computers plummeting.

To adapt, system builders quickly shifted from constructing labor-intensive computer systems to reselling what the large companies would offer, making the systems reseller a lucrative thing to be. After all, before the Internet helped link the manufacturer to the end user, these manufacturers needed a go-between to get these devices into a customer’s hands. However, as time passed, these resellers realized that they needed to do more. As a result, systems resellers phased into “VARs”, or value-added resellers.

Basically, VARs were computer resellers who would not only sell the machines but would also assist with the installation and networking of these systems. As the Internet became more applicable to business needs and challenges in the early 1990s, this networking (and the additional equipment needed to support it) only became more crucial.

At this point, the VARs became known as the systems integrators, as this more accurately described their function. This point in time was also the high point for break/fix IT repair services.

As the late ‘90s rolled around, IT services were commonplace enough that providers were frequently stepping into advisory roles for their clients, making recommendations and implementing best practices. With this shift, systems integrators adopted the title of IT consultants.

Of course, as the technology used by businesses became more advanced and capable, repairing issues as they arose became less feasible. This, paired with the remote capabilities that the Internet was able to support, made the idea of proactive maintenance and online solution delivery a workable possibility.

Thus, managed services were born, with service providers delivering up-to-date and optimized solutions in exchange for a set monthly rate.

What Do Managed Services Entail?

Nowadays, managed services have risen to become the preferred choice for businesses in the know, thanks to the improvements that these businesses see to their productivity and operations. With a single provider attending to all a business’ IT-related needs, working with a managed service provider has shown to have clear operational benefits.

At NuTech Services, our team of professionals is proud to provide the best managed services that businesses could ask for at a reasonable, all-inclusive rate. Interested in learning more about our services? Reach out to our team by calling 810.230.9455 today.

Dec, 2020

Improving Your Backup Strategy Doesn’t Have to Hurt the Bottom Line

If you are a regular visitor to our blog, you know just how important we think data backup is for any business that relies on data. If your business stores and creates data, you need to have a backup strategy in place. It’s that simple. Today, we want to discuss how to improve your data backup strategies with a BDR.

Why Do You Need Data Backup?

This is pretty self-explanatory. Your business is constantly under threat. You may not realize it because you’ve been fortunate enough not to have any threat be bad enough where your operational and financial data is actively at risk. That may not always be the case, however. Consider how important your data is and think about all the things that could happen where you would have to deal with data loss. Situations that stem from natural disasters, scams and hackers, hardware failure, and human error can all trigger data loss. That’s a lot of variables to cover to keep hoping that nothing will happen.

The health of your business depends on that data. There is employee data, financial data, vendor and customer data, and most importantly operational data that needs protection. At NuTech Services, we have seen a lot of different solutions to the data redundancy problem. We’ve seen people use tape backups, we’ve seen people back their data up to a network attached hard drive, we’ve even seen businesses neglect the process altogether. Today, there is a better way.

Get BDR From NuTech Services

We take data backup extremely seriously because it makes protecting our clients’ digital assets that much easier. It’s good for us, but it’s really great for our clients. The Backup and Disaster Recovery service we provide works several ways to protect a business’ digital assets. They include:

Complete customization of backup – A company has full control over their backed up data. They can choose what data they need to protect and our technicians will build a solution to those standards. This allows businesses to keep costs low if they only have certain data to back up and also allows them to backup everything if they so choose.
Following best practices – In the IT support industry there is something called the 3-2-1 rule. It is considered a best practice because it protects an organization’s data in multiple ways. With our BDR service, we follow this best practice. It means that we keep at least three copies of your data, with two being stored onsite, and one offsite. This means that if your business is hit by a disaster your organization will still have a working copy of your data that you can restore from the cloud, but if you just have to restore data because someone accidentally deleted something that you needed, you can restore it from your network-attached device.
Incremental updates – One of the best features of our BDR service is that you don’t have to run your backups after work hours. Once your data is uploaded to the BDR and the cloud, it then can incrementally back up data frequently. This provides an organization the ability to lose less data if something were to go wrong.
Professional support – As with any of our services, the solutions are tested, maintained, and managed consistently to provide the best possible situation for your business. Our expert technicians know that investing in technology can sometimes be a hard decision, but with the BDR, it is an extremely safe investment.

If you would like to learn more about data backup, data recovery or how it fits into your disaster recovery and business continuity plans, call our knowledgeable consultants today at 810.230.9455.

Nov, 2020

How Listening to Your Team Can Improve Your Use of Technology

Business leadership is an important trait for more than just a business’ leader by title. It is something that should be present at every level, encouraged by the individual at the top. To do so, it helps to ask your team the right questions to put them in a mindset of responsibility for the business’ well-being. Here, we’ve shared some of these questions to get you started.

“What does—and doesn’t—work?”

To motivate your team to take ownership over their responsibilities and invest in your successful operations, you need to communicate that what they say has credence. Your team can be a goldmine of insights if you hear what they have to say. Think about it, they’re the ones that have hands-on experience using the tools that you’ve put in place.

Asking this question also gives you the opportunity to hear any criticisms of the processes and procedures that your team is currently working through. Again, as the people actively following these processes, your staff will likely have the best impression of the most effective way to complete the task at hand. Listening to their feedback will tell you if a solution is proving ineffective or if the team needs more training and support to properly make use of it.

Regardless, your team members are likely to have information that you would find invaluable, so it pays to listen to what they have to say. Who knows, one of them may have a solution to a longstanding problem that just needs to be brought up.

“What can I do to help you succeed?”

This is an important question to ask, again and again, as time goes on. After all, as situations change, the answer to it will change as well. By asking this question, you can use the feedback you collect to improve your employees’ engagement levels that much better. Opening yourself to this kind of input enables your team to enjoy a greater level of access to you.

This question can also help you reinforce the data that you generate by asking the first question we discussed, furthering your efforts to improve your processes.

“What has your team done to further the organization’s goals?”

By asking this question of your team, you can help encourage them to collaborate more with each other and use the communication tools you’ve provided. Asking them what their coworkers have accomplished in tandem to them, helps you make sure that they remain aware of the company’s greater processes and how their efforts contribute to the organization’s success.

In asking it this way, you’re also encouraging this team-based focus to integrate into your company culture. As a result, your team members will begin to think more as a team and work together to accomplish everything on their shared agenda.

“How would you make what we offer our clientele better?”

This is a practical example of what we’ve already discussed—asking those with first-hand knowledge to draw upon their experience to help improve what it is you’re discussing with them. Seeking insights from those who are working directly with your clientele will help you to identify and resolve the biggest impacts influencing your company and services.

“If you were me, what would you do differently?”

This question can provide you with a variety of useful information, from the biggest pain points that your team is experiencing to all the small inconsistencies you may have missed. It also helps you encourage your team to see things from a perspective of leadership.

This is what you want, as it isn’t enough anymore to simply have drones pecking away at assigned tasks. You want to have people who are ready to embrace innovation and are engaged enough to work their way upwards in your organization. Handing the power over to your team, even in the hypothetical, helps to show the employee that their input is appreciated and valued.

Should this feedback ever reference any difficulties due to insufficient technology solutions and resources to complete a task, NuTech Services is here to help. Our services are designed to improve the efficacy and security of your workplace, boosting your productivity.

To learn more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

Sep, 2020

How Companies Will Need IT as They Return to Workplaces

As the pandemic enters its third quarter, many places have the spread of the COVID-19 virus under control and are starting to open up offices and other workplaces. Ultimately, it is the business owners’ and managers’ decision whether or not to demand attendance in an office, as most jobs completed in one can be effectively completed from home. For businesses that are opening their office and inviting their employees back, technology is still going to play a significant role. Let’s take a look at what IT is going to be important for people returning to the office after all this time.

It’s true that there are a lot of businesses that rely on their workforce to show up every day. Many of these businesses were forced to shut down or operate at limited capacity during the pandemic but are just now getting up to speed. Outside of operations, there are a lot of administrative uses of technology, some of which involve protecting employee and customer information. Let’s get into some of the strategies that businesses can use to get the most out of their workforce at this time.

Remote Operations

Ironically, until this whole COVID-19 mess is over with, the most prudent decisions are going to be made using technology that supports remote work, even if you’ve mandated employees to work at your place of business. Not only does it remove physical interaction of your staff to protect them from contracting potentially dangerous viruses, it protects clients as well.

This strategy includes the use of internet-based tools and substantial training initiatives. According to an IMB survey just over half of remote workers during the pandemic were actually trained to protect work-related resources, so making employee training a priority makes sense.

Hybrid Operations

There’s a saying, “You have to crawl before you walk.” It means that you have to work up to something. If you already have a remote workforce and you are looking to get them to move back to the office or the workplace, you should start implementing a strategy that gets people in waves. The most important thing is to prioritize employee health during this time, as any COVID-19 outbreak could make it difficult for you to conduct business at all.

In regards to the IT deployment, this strategy is probably the most resource intensive because you have to both be cognizant of your network security inside your business, while also keeping abreast of how your remote workers are using your computing resources.

Onsite Operations

Getting back to “business-as-usual” will be nice, and if you can accomplish it now, that’s great. It’s just not a strategy many businesses can support at this juncture, especially if they feature open office spaces and shared bathroom facilities. IT management is simpler for IT administrators when everyone is in one location and on the same page.

Regardless of what your plans are for your human resources, you need to ensure that everyone understands how to mitigate the numerous types of threats your business faces each day. To talk to one of our security professionals about your business’ situation, call us today at 810.230.9455.

Sep, 2020

Small Businesses Make Progress with Managed Services

For a lot of businesses, 2020 has seen some major challenges. Many SMBs feel like they are in a snow globe attached to a paint mixer that is always switched on. With all the problems laid out in front of them, many businesses have decided that in order to protect their business that they would subscribe to a strategy of proactivity. Let’s take a look at a couple of ways managed services help keep you ahead.

What is it to be Proactive?

It’s all about preventing issues and risk. Being proactive is simply action taken after a risk assessment. Many times, risk is inherent, so being proactive is just managing situations to keep risk at bay. It goes without saying that taking proactive steps, especially in business, can be some of the most effective strategies to get ahead. Why is this? It comes down to time.

When a person sees a problem and fixes the problem, the time that is spent fixing the problem is waste, especially when taking proactive action could eliminate the problem in the first place. Managed services are predicated on this very concept. The more you do to keep problems from presenting themselves, the more time there is to be productive. We measure this in uptime.

Downtime, the Business Killer

Your business isn’t Google. It isn’t Google in 2013. That was the year that Google went down for almost five hours. Imagine five hours without Google! It cost the company–in 2013–an estimated $545,000. Now, Google can afford that, but it just illustrates how expensive downtime can be. It can be problematic in several ways, including:

Customer frustration – Downtime is extremely problematic for your customer relationships. Not only does extended downtime flood your business with calls and messages, it also fosters distrust.
Staff frustration – For many small businesses, employees wear a couple different caps. One of those caps, that many workers would rather not wear, is that of a customer service representative. If someone on your production team can’t get at the resources they need to do their jobs, you are paying them to either be PR or janitorial staff. Either way, they tend to get impatient pretty quick when they can’t do what they were hired to do.
Exorbitant cost – The two previous examples fuel rising costs. If you are paying your employees and they aren’t producing anything tangible, you are losing money, period.

Limiting downtime is a priority for every well-run business, otherwise you are just throwing away money.

Proactive Services

At NuTech Services, we have a couple proactive solutions that can really benefit your business. They include:

Remote monitoring – By remotely monitoring your network and infrastructure, our expert technicians can see if there are inconsistencies, infiltrations, or irregularities that we can take care of before they become problematic. By staying ahead of hardware issues and monitoring for malware and other network-related issues, you avoid the downtime it takes to fix these issues when they come to a head.
Cloud computing – Another option is to take your computing infrastructure offsite. Cloud solutions often come with comprehensive management baked into the price so that your employees will have anytime, anywhere access to the data and applications they need.
Patch management – Software vulnerabilities can be exploited by hackers and cause significant devastation on your company’s network. By updating all of your software systems with the latest updates, you mitigate the risk that comes from running older versions of software.

Proactivity doesn’t just happen, you have to make it happen. If you would like to stare down some of the biggest risks to your technology and data, and improve your business’ uptime, call us today at 810.230.9455.

Aug, 2020

It’s Time to Audit Your IT

Unfortunately, small businesses are having a hard time right now. If your operations are to continue throughout this time, some significant changes are going to be required. Here, we’re looking at how you can use current technologies to help sustain your business. Chances are, you may already have these technologies available to you.

Making the Most of What You Have

As states have mandated that businesses either close or move operations offsite for the well-being of their employees and clients, many people seem to have been caught off-guard by the duration of these orders. As a result, many businesses have since shifted from a “shut down and wait it out” strategy to trying to do whatever they can—which, for many, is implementing a remote workforce.

Regardless of whether a business tried to cobble together remote operations at the onset or later on, there are still a lot of issues that they will need to contend with. Paying the bills, setting everyone up with the solutions needed to work, and maintaining productivity are all necessary to consider.

Some businesses took the route of laying off their workforce as shutdowns began as they put their businesses on pause and were then provided a lifeline in the form of the paycheck protection program. This subsidy enabled them to keep at least some of their team working and employed. A major tool that helped to accomplish this for many was automation, as this helps to keep your finances fluid.

Automation helps businesses spend their time more productively, fulfilling tasks like payroll processing, managing operations, and invoicing. This not only helps save time, but also money, mainly because these common tasks are commonly outsourced. Of course, other business needs like collaboration, supply chain management, and project management can also be benefitted by leveraging automation.

Security Amidst Security

Cybersecurity is another critical business need that has been largely pushed to the back burner. There has actually been a decline in cybersecurity spending, despite an upwards trend in business being conducted online. Small businesses actually cut their cybersecurity budgets when revenues began to disappear. The cybersecurity industry has been growing at a rate of approximately five percent each year for the past eight years. This year? A little over one percent.

If you’re currently depending on a remote workforce, you want to give them every opportunity to experience success. This is true of most. Most organizations, while they are reducing their overall cybersecurity budget, are still investing in endpoint and intrusion protection. This shows us that, despite the uncertainty of the future, they are still reducing organizational risk by securing their network endpoints.

Of course, you shouldn’t rely on automation to eliminate cyberthreats. Despite IT solutions now heavily featuring artificial intelligence to identify threats, many attacks now rely on phishing attempts. These only become more dangerous when your employees are working remotely, and even more so on their personal devices. As a result, you need to ensure your team is aware of the phishing attempts that will be directed against them. This will require ongoing training in updated best practices, if only to prevent a major malware attack from infiltrating your network.

One way or another, businesses will almost certainly have a larger focus on remote operations moving forward. For assistance with the solutions and strategies that will keep your processes progressing from here on, reach out to the IT experts at NuTech Services today. Give us a call at 810.230.9455.

Jul, 2020

Why There Has Never Been a Better Time for Managed IT

Okay, time for some real talk: There is no denying that 2020 has held a few unique challenges for everyone who runs a business. Economic challenges, political tensions, and an honest-to-goodness pandemic have all thrown us all for a loop. As a result, it is important that businesses all adjust their technology priorities to survive. Let’s discuss these priorities, and how they will need to shift.

IT Management Matters More Than Ever

From a certain point of view, businesses now find themselves in a unique position to restructure their operations. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided an inconvenient case study of sorts that shows a promising outlook on remote productivity.

It has also helped to shine the light on how impactful waste can be in poorly managed IT strategies. Without any engaged oversight, the heightened use of cloud services can lead to a few considerable issues, including

Unused accounts and services
Duplicate accounts for services
Services still earmarked for a former employee
Misconfigured services

These issues can ultimately account for 30 percent of an organization’s IT investment spend and can be resolved with remarkably little effort. The problem is that someone has to know to catch it—and if these things were set up by somebody who has since left, or worked for a break-fix provider, that person may not be available.

So, it only makes sense that businesses would want to take account of these costs, and shore them in.

Of course, we have to talk about the economy. With the economy in the state that it is in, businesses are going to have to batten down the hatches. In addition to consolidating budgets and managing them better, businesses need to know that they have the solutions necessary to survive going forward.

This will require modern solutions that allow for remote productivity and collaboration to take place. A modern IT provider, like NuTech Services, can provide for all these needs.

How Our Services Can Help

As a managed service provider, we work in the background of your organization, remotely keeping an eye on the technology your team is relying on to do their jobs. In doing so, we can spot potential wastes of time and money—including the ones listed above, by the way—and resolve them before you ever find out about it. This way, your workday can carry on without the added stress that technology issues bring.

To learn more about our services, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

Jun, 2020

Are These Technologies Protecting Your Operational Security?

With businesses slowly resuming their operations, it is effectively guaranteed that this process will be bumpy. However, this in and of itself presents an opportunity for these businesses to improve their operations for long-term benefits. Whether you are actively opening your doors or ramping up to do so, you need to have today’s technology supporting you and your activities.

Let’s review some recommended technologies for you to embrace as you reopen your business.

Updated Hardware and Software Solutions

First things first—while businesses resume their operations, the chaos that will predictably ensue is the perfect time for cybercriminals to take their shot. Therefore, you need to make it a priority that all your hardware and software solutions are fully updated or upgraded as improvements are made available. In doing so, you make sure that the tools your team will use are as secure as they can be against the latest threats.

As a bonus, updated solutions commonly come with other improvements and features that add to your potential productivity. This means that your team will be in the position to accomplish as much as they can in the shortest available time without being distracted by security concerns.

Cloud-based Technology

Cloud-based tools have created the opportunity for businesses of all kinds to successfully adopt specialized solutions for their needs. Telework is also made simpler using cloud-based technology solutions, as your solutions are made accessible from wherever your team happens to be working due to its inherent mobility and operational efficiency that your functionality will require.

Monitoring and Maintenance Services

As your team returns to the workplace, there is likely to be a lot of work necessary before your operations are back to 100 percent. One thing is certain: you won’t be able to afford any downtime that could possibly be avoided.

For this to be the reality inside your office, you will need to ensure your uptime… something that a relationship with a trusted IT professional can do. Using remote monitoring tools to proactively catch burgeoning issues and fix them before they impact your business, a provider like NuTech Services can potentially identify and mitigate problems without you ever realizing that you had an issue at all.

Telework and Communication Capabilities

With the ongoing risk that businesses may once again need to close their doors, it only makes sense to have the communication and collaboration tools that would enable true business continuity. The right technology can make the shift to remote work almost seamless, especially if the cloud and its many capabilities are leveraged appropriately. With many capabilities now offered as-a-Service, Voice-over-Internet-Protocol coming to the forefront of communications, and so many other business resources now taking advantage of cloud delivery, your team should be just as capable at home as they are in the office.

A word of warning needs to be shared, however, as remote work can potentially give your team the opportunity to expose your data. If you elect to use the cloud, this makes the next section even more important.

Security and Authentication Measures

For your data to remain protected throughout remote work, you need to have the right solutions and procedures in place for your team to use and follow. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) will enable your team to safely access your business’ data while they are working remotely, and the proper protections on their endpoints will help to minimize their risks.

As far as their access controls are concerned, each team member needs to follow authentication practices that meet a high standard. Their passwords need to meet vigorous security benchmarks, used in conjunction with protections like multi-factor authentication, or MFA.

Your office also needs to be made impervious to as much downtime as possible to permit your team the most productivity as they work.

For assistance in making any of these preparations, or with any IT challenges you are facing, reach out to NuTech Services! Help is only a call to 810.230.9455 away.